Research is proposed to study further the interactions between human memory and adult aging processes. Experiments are proposed to test the general hypothesis that age differences in memory are due to differences in encoding strategy. Three experiments dealing with episodic memory will investigate the use of three types of encoding strategies and their interactions with age. In the first experiment elaboration, organization, and imagery will be controlled by orienting tasks. If a specific strategy can be induced, and if age differences were due to the ineffective use of that particular strategy, then the difference in recall after standard learning instructions should be reduced by the orienting task. Organization and elaboration will be further examined in a multi-trial experiment with orienting tasks. Organization will be additionally manipulated by the organizational structure of the list (category size) and elaboration will be additionally manipulated by the number of different encoding operations required in the learning sequence (number of different orienting tasks). A third experiment will isolate the use of visual imagery by presenting pictorial materials that can be coded by either visual or verbal attributes. The extent to which subjects code visually and verbally will be indepenently measured. A fourth experiment is also proposed to examine memory for individual paired-associates in a cross-sequential design (an eight year replication with independent samples from the same birth cohorts). This experiment is an important first step at determining whether these types of research findings collected in cross-sectional designs, are found with designs that are better able to look at age changes.